i'll paint a love song on the canvas of your heart
by with the monsters
Summary: Her stars are sparkling and she might just be the world to him.- LucyLorcan, for Bree.


i'll paint a love song on the silent canvas of your heart  
_so sublime when the stars are alive, but you don't know the greatness you are._

**A/N: **For Bree-utiful, who's birthday it is TODAY and writes a far better Lucy than I could ever hope to! Everyone go spam her PM with birthday wishes, okay?

* * *

She's always been one to search for real love. She devours wizarding and muggle magazines in equal doses and she feels silly for it because, you know, everyone sees her as the sarcastic one with the heart of ice. It's sort of a front that's become who she is and she doesn't really know how to change it.

It probably started when she was little because it was always _MollyMollyMolly _with her red hair and her quick mind and her avid reading, and Lucy was the background noise, the soundtrack to Molly's success.

She's clever too but she's not _Molly_ – her grades are okay but not stellar and she might wear stars in her eyes that sparkle brighter than Sirius (which is her favourite, by the way) but Molly's the pretty one, Molly's the smart one – Molly's the one who everyone notices.

Until she was thirteen she was content to fade into the background and be silent – Molly casts a shadow longer than Big Ben but shadows are cool places for people with minds ravaged with colour.

Then she met Lorcan and he made her feel like the sun ray, not the shadow it casts, and suddenly the world was a little brighter and the stars were a little sharper and she wasn't second-best, not any more. They're like children – they sneak out of their dormitories and talk and laugh in the dead silence of the night and she absolutely will _not _let herself fall for him because she wants _real_ _safe _love; Lorcan is dangerous and spontaneous and there is something that draws her in despite herself.

"Come on, Luce," he begs one night as they lie on a rug he has conjured up, staring at the constellations from the top of the astronomy tower, the biting Scottish breeze battering at the wards he has placed around them. "Trust me – I'm never going to hurt you, I swear. You know me."

She turns her head to face him, an old expression that doesn't belong on her sixteen-year-old face scrunching up her features and dulling the prettypretty stars in her blue eyes.

"I do trust you, Lorcan," she promises, her fingers stretching out to mesh with his. "I don't trust _me_."

"You're ridiculous," he informs her, rolling onto his front and regarding her, his hand knotting in the ends of her long hair, his grey eyes dark against the backdrop of the heavens. "You're so _careful _with everything, you know? You need to learn to take some risks, yeah?"

"I can't," she murmurs regretfully, and he sighs with frustration and flops back over to regard the diamond-studded skies again.

"I'll teach you," he says quietly. "I'll help you jump before you look."

"Knowing you, you'll just push me and hope I learn to fly on the way down," she teases gently, turning onto her side, sliding her fingers into the front of his curly blonde hair and tugging lightly, returning his soft smile. "Not all of us are cocky enough to assume we can build wings before we hit the ground."

"But that's _life,_" he argues, his thumb reaching up to slide against her cheek, flower petals against velvet, and she shuts her eyes and sighs _ohso_gently and it is that, always that, that keeps him battling through the quicksand that is their relationship. "Jumping off the edge and building your wings on the way down – that's living, Luce. Not trying and testing twenty different methods of aviation before even considering shuffling near the edge."

"Don't hate on my love of preparation," she warns. "It'll save your life one day."

"I'll put a hundred galleons on you being wrong about that," he offers, and she grins and spits on her palm, holding it out to him.

"You're on, Scamander. If my preparation has not saved your life at least once by the time we are both thirty you have to pay me one hundred galleons."

"And if it has not by the time we are both thirty, then you have to marry me."

She narrows her eyes at him, her head tilted slightly to the side – and, as usual, he ignores the warning signs, just blinks ingenuously over at her.

"What makes you think I won't be married by thirty?" she inquires icily, and he just grins and spits on his own palm, extending it towards her.

"Well, considering you spend every day wandering around lost in either a picture you're busy painting or shooting down every guy who asks you out I think I'll take my chances."

"Asshole," she says, but shakes his hand anyway. He laughs exuberantly and pulls her towards him, his fingers dancing up and down her sides as he tickles her and she shrieks and protests that if he doesn't stop right away she'll curse him to high heaven (but he doesn't stop and she doesn't even bother reaching for her wand).

When he finally accepts her breathless pleas for mercy she brushes her hair out of her red face with a shaking hand and sits up, reaching for her satchel.

"Here," she says, handing over a sheaf of papers. "Tell me what you think?" He pulls himself up into a sitting position and leans over to study the first one, the clear starlight illuminating the picture quickly.

"It's Roxanne," he says in delight, recognising her cousin instantly, and proceeds to flick through the rest, grinning as each different person appears, captured by her skilled pencil in moments in time that would doubtless have faded into the blurred past had Lucy not been sitting in just the right place for the right light to hit the person she happened to be regarding – and, being Lucy, her pencil had been tucked behind her ear and her pad in the front pocket of her bag and it had been but the work of a moment to transfer the image from the living, breathing air to the bright white paper in front of her.

"How come you don't draw flowers any more?" he asks as he leafs through the last couple of pictures (both him, but he doesn't dare even hope that there is anything to read into this) and glances up at her.

She shrugs. "The colours bleed into each other. I need new paints. Plus it's impossible to find time to set everything up and just sit and _be_, you know? I need to get into that artist-mojo state of mind for the picture to not look like the finger-painting of a five-year-old."

"You're far better than you give yourself credit for," he informs her, offering the stack of drawings back over to her. "Tell you what – if you'll go to Hogsmeade with me on Saturday I'll buy you new paints and set you up somewhere in the grounds on Sunday and fight off anyone that tries to come near you."

"It's always about the bargains with you, isn't it?" she grins, tucking the papers back into her bag and pushing a stray strand of hair that has escaped her ponytail back behind her ear.

"I've known you for five years now – I know it's the only way to get you to agree to anything."

She tilts her head to the side and regards him for a moment or two.

"Okay, deal," she capitulates finally, but holds up a hand to forestall his celebrations. "But what about that Transfiguration essay I need to do this weekend?"

With a long-suffering sigh he hunches his shoulders in self-loathing. "I'll do it," he mutters, scowling. "Then you can copy it."

"And that is why I love you," she tells him happily, plopping a quick kiss onto his cheek and then getting to her feet, holding out her hand to help him up. "Come on, it's late and I don't have any cuts tomorrow to sleep in."

"I have two," he can't resist boasting, accepting her hand and rising to his feet, pulling out his wand to conjure the rug and wards away. She shivers as the wind finally reaches her, and he pulls off his jumper and shoves it over her head before she can refuse.

"You're so annoying," she complains loudly as they start down the stairs, and he just smiles because he sees her subtly bend her face to breathe in the scent he's left on the collar.

"Whatever."

They meander back to Ravenclaw tower, pausing for a moment in the common room to stare out of the huge windows at the brightbright stars. He moves up so her back is touching all the way down his front and represses the shiver.

"It's beautiful," she sighs, and he puts his arms around her waist and smiles into her hair.

"Yes, it is," he agrees, breathing in her sunshine-flower-soap smell that always has that underlying hint of acrylic paint. "I think I could just about stay like this forever."

She leans back against him quite without meaning to and can't make herself not feel entirely too comfortable.

"Which is your favourite?" she asks, her eyes scanning the wide skies. He turns her around gently but firmly, his hands around her upper arms, and grins. She shuts her eyes as he brushes his fingers across her eyelids, pressing a kiss to each eye in turn.

"These ones are," he murmurs, and she blinks up at him, stars sparkling, and smiles.

"You are too damn soppy for your own good," she tells him, and turns to go to bed, disentangling herself with the skill of long practice.

"One of these days I'm going to win you over," he promises as she reaches the stairs. "And I'll force some colour into that stone heart of yours."

She just grins and blows him a kiss over her shoulder as she ascends out of his view, her satchel slung over her shoulder. He steals one more glance at the stretching sky and then turns to go to bed himself.

* * *

On Sunday she shows him a picture of a wild purple orchid against brightly alive green grass and he smiles and wipes a smudge of paint off her cheek and kisses her.

* * *

She loses the bet, but it's irrelevant because they're already married to each other by the time they're twenty-three and he's painted a million love songs into her soul and her stars shine brighter than all the constellations woven together.

She still wears his jumper and makes preparations for everything, but he gets the last laugh because she finds herself pregnant at twenty-four and cannot fathom it because she didn't _plan _for this – and he grins and holds up the contraceptive potion he was supposed to be taking and she screams and punches him and won't talk to him for three days.

But feeling the baby kick inside of her is so wholly unexpected that it fires inspiration straight to her brain and he finally breaks down the door to her studio to find her marooned in a sea of scrap paper, paint splattered across the walls, and she is standing in the middle of chaos clutching her swollen belly with one hand and a mess of colours in the other hand and she is smiling like her world is made of sunshine.

"I love you," she tells him. "And I didn't plan this painting."

It sells for near-on nine hundred thousand galleons and he waltzes her dizzily around their small flat (that they'll trade in in less than two months for a small house perfect for a young family) and she is still wearing his jumper and her stars are shining through the blurry film of elated tears.

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**A/N: **Please don't favourite without leaving a review, thank you.


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